6 of 406 ideas

Three deliberately boring directories in niches Google Maps handles badly, monetised with display ads: 80,000-100,000 monthly visitors and $2,300-$3,000 a month for three years, untouched for the last six months.

Fifteen years of boring healthcare directories monetised by one sponsored hotline number — about $350K a year after tax, split three ways, with no employees

Two words — one activity, one place — and a page that lists every one of them. A hot-springs directory for a single US state does around 25,000 visitors and roughly $1,000/month; a crime-map directory does 1.3 million visitors; a pickleball court finder raised $2.5M.

A directory that helps people find addiction and mental-health treatment, monetised the way Google is — facilities pay to be on the first page — went from $300K of annual recurring revenue in 2017 to over $30M, financed almost entirely with revenue-based debt instead of equity